We may not have the resources of a Google or Microsoft but that should not hold you back when it comes to making your business known online

In the afterglow of both my external hard drives giving up the ghost altogether and while sitting in our weekly meeting at work it dawned on me how utterly complicated life must be for every business owner juggling making a profit today with building a digital empire for tomorrow.

Many entrepreneurs don't have the luxury of time to plan their internet strategy. You'll probably be in a position where without a website your business would be practically extinct.

The fact is unless you're where your customers are - and most of them are using the web to find the best stuff they can afford - your uphill task to grow or even stay afloat is getting steeper by the day.

I'd have to sit down with a big mug of tea if I had a business to start from scratch today. Making money ethically is harder than ever, especially if you're naive to what your customers really want. And as well as it being necessary to build stronger relationships with your customers of today and tomorrow than ever before - their loyalty is your future trade - every internet marketer would have you spend the 25th, 26th and 27th hour of every day genning up on web analytics, digital advertising, search engine optimisation, mobile marketing, social media and content creation.

Ok that's the bad news. But there's a silver lining here: when you simplify everything you do, following religiously the rudimentary processes forming the bedrock of your business, much of this work on the web is accordingly made easier.

There are really only two ways you can use the web for business: to make people aware of your physical location, or to sell stuff. You can do a bit of both - but it gets tricky doing business online - eCommerce - if you're relatively new to the web.

Thankfully someone's thought of a really quick way for you to get your products and services online. o.ribbon.co lets you load up your things and sell stuff on your website or social networks like Facebook and YouTube.

First things first, though - decide what's realistically achievable for your business on the internet. You're not going to create the next viral video unless you're selling doggy cupcakes, and unless you've discovered 10,000 Xbox Ones hiding in your attic you're not going to make your first million online in the next few months.

Set a simple objective and aim to achieve it this year. You might want 50 subscribers to your newsletter, or to write a blog post that's read by 1,000 people. Be prepared for a lot of experimentation and open yourself up to all kinds of feedback to help refine your website and get closer to your goal.

Of course, I'm assuming you've got a website. If that's not the case, you have plenty of options at your disposal. WordPress is the place most people start, though if you want someone to do all the heavy lifting for you squarespace.com virtually builds your entire website for you.

If you're anything like me, though, you'll want to get your hands dirty. Web design piques your interest? Get a primer on where to begin, and learn lots of other techy things including photography, with a raft of free courses offered at https://courses.tutsplus.com/free/

Quickly you'll start amassing a decent amount of data and thanks to social media, meeting a lot of people with big ideas to complement yours.

Collaboration is a big thing these days - whether it's between you and a customer or, if you're not a sole trader, other members of your team or mastermind group. Get a free Google account ( accounts.google.com/SignUp ) and use Google Drive ( drive.google.com ) to create and share documents with anyone. Drive also gives you free storage space (I've got 25Gb) but if you want more control and flexibility in sharing digital content you might want dropbox.com (2Gb free) or box.com (10Gb) which will also appear as 'drives' to make it easier to move stuff around.

Being on the web is a waste of time unless people can find you. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is less about black magic and more about common sense than ever before thanks to Google clamping down on dodgy practices. Essentially it all boils down to creating valuable content that people find so fascinating, they share with others.

It's not-so-widely-known that simply by using the search company's Google+ social network to widely promote and share your useful ideas, you'll get better search engine rankings than those who ignore it.

Once traffic starts flowing your way you'll want to know the most popular areas of your website. Google Analytics is the place to go; it strikes fear into most people because the dashboard makes you feel like Matthew Broderick in Wargames (showing my age).

But it's there to help, not hinder. You need to plug a few lines of code into your website to make it work - but head first to the mothership at google.com/analytics/learn/ for some easy-to-understand guides.

It'll become clear pretty quickly that quite a lot of your visitors are browsing your website on smaller and smaller devices. Mobile marketing is something that'll take a bit more time to get your head around but you'll need to bear it in mind as you get more confident in doing business online.

Creating sites for tablets and mobile phones is called responsive web design. It's a huge thing at the moment and like wearable technology it has its supporters and detractors - but anything to make your website more appealing to the customer on the move can only be a good thing.

Responsive design will cost you a fortune if you engage a professional web developer, but you can save yourself a fortune by getting a decent grounding in the various techniques. I'd advise you to take a look at codeschool.com/courses/journey-into-mobile to give yourself a head start.

Lastly if you want to splash the cash and be where your customers are searching on Google, you'll want to get on top of AdWords. Unsurprisingly YouTube - owned by Google - has a dedicated AdWords Online Classroom: youtube.com/adwordsclassroomuk

Once you're feeling more competent have a look at paid-for systems like hubspot.com, which tie all we've talked about together. Tools like this aren't cheap but they will save you a lot of time in the long run as they automate many of the online jobs you've been doing and just tell you what's working, and what's not.

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The Editor

Mark Thoma

Liverpool-born Mark joined the Daily Post in January 2014 after seven years as editor of its Merseyside sister title the Liverpool Post. He started out as a weekly news reporter on Wirral Newspapers, and spent seven years at the Daily Post and Liverpool Echo. He was The Press Association's regional correspondent for North Wales, Merseyside and Cheshire from 1983 to 1997, before returning to the ECHO as deputy news editor. He has won a number of journalism awards, including the UK Press Gazzette Regional Reporter of the Year award, and in 1993 wrote a book on the James Bulger murder.